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I've now held an official FIFA licence, to enable me to represent professional football players since December 1995. However, it's not just about representation. It's about career management - and that's where I believe I have an edge. Many of the current crop of football agents are either ex-professional players or 'closet' independent financial advisers. With a few notable exceptions, ex-professionals may only make for pushy agents, as their time in football has alerted them, first hand, to many of football's unsavoury practices. Many of these guys are little more than 'deal managers' and their players are hard-pushed to make contact with them, other than when a move or a renewed contract is imminent - at which time they then stick to the players like leeches. How arrogant of the footballing authorities to assume that they can ever bring these rogue characters to book. It takes an agent to catch an agent: our footballing authorities move with all the speed of molasses, when left to their own investigative processes. After thirty years in mainstream entertainment (primarily the music business) I know of no other way to approach player management other than on the basis of full-time career guidance. As I’ve stated elsewhere on this website, it's not just a game of two halves - it's a life of two halves. On it's own dedicated page, you will be able to have a brief insight into my 'Parklife' project, an innovative incentive to re-standardise the science of young player career development. So, in the meantime, I just stick with my day job (Tour Manager & Tour Accountant for Westlife), I hold onto my FIFA licence and I continue to seek the resource to enable me to launch 'Parklife' onto an unsuspecting football world - and, in the process, completely re-write the player management rule book.
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